Internet courtesy

is mostly an oxymoron, especially on many of the blogs. But sometimes I think some people go out of their way to be insulted. And, considering today’s society that’s to be expected. We have people who don’t want the score kept in Little League, and heaven forbid that their school papers have red ink used in grading.

All of this leads to an unhealthy amount of self esteem. At some point we need to start telling children that their team lost because the other team played better and they made a 70 because they didn’t know the answers. As the old saying goes, rough seas make good sailors.

Perhaps that is why when you send an email to some people you get a response to fill out some form so that they can recognize who you are and accept your message. Look folks, if these people are so busy and so important that they demand I fill out a form, they obviously don’t have time for my message, so I just ignore them.

Now I know that these folks will plead that all they are doing is protecting their computer from spam, and from X rated spam at that. And they don’t want their children, who they share the email with, to see. With them I say sign up with an ISP that will let them use multiple screen names (AOL is one such), set up a screen name for the kid(s) and then use parental controls that will let them screen out who the kid(s) can receive emails from, IM with, and what websites they can visit. As for their email, Spam Filters do a good job, and if you don’t recognize the sender, then delete or open with care. Deleting, btw, takes about zero time.

Beyond that there are people who send group emails. Two or three reply and now you have three emails to the same people.. Two or three reply to the reply and now you have emails dribbling off the side of the hard drives…. If the replies have been snarky, then the situation becomes worse.

This happened recently to me. A friend copied me, I responded, etc., etc. Since I thought someone wanted to talk, and being a fan of Joan Rivers, I offered the use of this blog. And then I started getting emails telling me to take them off my mail list. And despite telling them that I didn’t have them on a list, several continued. (See above. Paragraph two.) I even made the point that we could discuss the issue on the blog with those not interested, not copied. Still did no good. One even got snarky about my writing ability. Besides the fact that he must like easy targets, I saw no evidence of thought displayed.

So as far as I am concerned, it works like this. If I get an email with my name and “30” others on it, and if I want to reply, then I will reply to “all.” Why? Because if the sender thought they should get the original, then they should get all the responses.